“split” command is used to split a large file into manageable small pieces.
Syntax: split [OPTION]… [FILE [PREFIX]]
Here are the command options:
Split a file into pieces
When you split a file with no options, the file chunks created start with x followed by two alphabets in the following manner.
Customize the suffix length (-a option)
You can customize the length of the suffix of the generated chunks using –a option.
Split a file by number of lines (-l option)
You can create the chunks with desired number of lines. The example below creates files with 500 lines in each.
Split a file by file size (-b option)
You can split a file based on the desired size of the chunk.
- -b nK splits into nKB files
- -b nM splits into nMB files
- -b nG splits into nGB files
In the example below, we split a 559k file into 100k files.
$ split -b 100k addressbook.db
Split a file with numeric suffix (-d option)
You can have the suffix with numbers using the -d option.
$ split -d addressbook.db
Split a file with custom suffix
You can have the suffix with numbers using the -d option.
In the example below, we will add myfiles- as the suffix.
$ split addressbook.db myfiles-
Split a file into n number of files (-n option)
You can split a file into fixed number of chunks using the -n option.
The example below split the file into three files
$ split -n3 addressbook.db
Do not generate empty output files (-e option)
With certain scenarios, the split command ends up creating empty files. Using the -e option, you can force the split command not to create empty files.
$ split -e addressbook.db
Print additional information (–verbose option)
use –verbose potion
Display help
$ split --help
Display version information
$ split --version
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